Flood and Cyclone-Prone Areas in Eastern Australia May Be 'Uninsurable' by 2030, Report Suggests (theguardian.com) 50
Extreme weather due to the climate crisis is expected to increasingly make some Australian homes "uninsurable," with a new report suggesting up to one in 25 households will struggle to be covered by 2030. From a report: The analysis by the Climate Council, using data from consultants Climate Valuation, mapped the 10 electorates across the country considered most at risk of becoming uninsurable due to flood, fire and other extreme weather risk. The most at-risk areas were mostly found to be in flood and cyclone-prone areas of Queensland and in parts of Victoria built over flood plains near major rivers. "Uninsurable" is defined in the report as an area where the required type of insurance product was expected to be not available, or only available at such high cost that no one could afford it.
Re:FAGS read The Guardian! (Score:5, Insightful)
So the actuaries at the insurance companies are somehow caught up the Guardian mags and their ilk, eh? These are the people that can put a price on your grandmother, cost out the treadmill of your life, develop risk assessments for billion dollar developments. They aren't wild eyed conservationists.
And why bring a slur term for homosexuals into this. Maybe they turn you on and you should consider coming out already?
we need more of these in America (Score:3)
No doubt a bunch of fascists and progressives will scream bloody murder over this, but the fact is, that these 3 states have enormous amounts of disaster and continue to build their homes to the lowest regulations possible.
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Nearly every home in the US is built on a historic flood. Because cities like to be build near rivers and shorelines. And farms like to be build around nice flat ancient river basins.
California has the most building regulations in the US. And requirements for earthquake and land slides are part of the code. With fire and flood being other aspects of property damage that are less defended by building code. While New York has the most complex rules by most measures, it too does not have much in the way of flo
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Have you priced earthquake insurance in California? It's quite expensive. I suspect that many places will be seeing a rise in the costs of fire insurance.
I really doubt that any place will be uninsurable whether in California or Australia, but insurance rates can be so high that it isn't worthwhile, i.e. so that it's effectively uninsurable.
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Earthquake insurance is expensive because of the simple and almost certainly correct assumption that if your building falls down, so did a whole lot of others in the same region, and the cost to rebuild is going to be several times what it would be if your building had burned down without affecting structures around it. Flood insurance is making the same assumption to a lesser degree, which helps explain why the two are somewhat pooled together as a risk category.
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Most of California, Texas and Florida should not be insurable in terms of home. Instead, these states should have their own local state insurance for these homes, and not being covered by the rest of the nation.
A Price Anderson act for homes - it works for Nuclear power plants.
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The chance of a Nuclear issue is real slim to none.
OTOH, building cheap homes in flood zones, earthquake areas, or hurricane areas, is just plain foolish.
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BIG difference. The chance of a Nuclear issue is real slim to none. OTOH, building cheap homes in flood zones, earthquake areas, or hurricane areas, is just plain foolish.
Allow me to have you clarify what you wrote Slim to none means that you accept that it is impossible to have a nuclear accident at a reactor. Slim I can accept, but impossible is something else.
Anyhow, the reason that Price Anderson exists is that otherwise, there isn't any company that would insure them other than at a limit far below what will happen if one goes boomish.
And just as with Price Anderson, there is government flood insurance for people who build in places that will probably be underwate
Re: we need more of these in America (Score:2)
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Multiple 4th gen reactor designs make it impossible for meltdown due to physics. For example, thorium molten salt reactor can NOT melt down, barring a direct attack with a massive bomb.
Which by the way, if I was at war with a country, my first order of business would be taking out every nuclear reactor. Day one, one reactor gets 5 missiles each. And I would highly encourage anyone I was considering going to war with to go with the standard as few reactors, as big as possible.
Our PA wind farms would take nukes to eliminate.
Good top see that otherwise, it is not possible for modern nuclear reactors to ever have any problems that involve any release of radioactivity. The genie has be
Makes sense to me. (Score:3)
One of the odd quirks in my neck of the woods is that insurance for a home destroyed by, say, a forest fire, covers rebuilding the structure in situ.
Of course, that's silly. Like rebuilding on a flood plain, it's mostly a bad idea.
I also think it's more honest to refuse to sell insurance than to deny a claim later on.
Re:Makes sense to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
The actuaries are well aware of the dangers and up until recently, computed their companies can still make a profit on the insurance policies in those areas. Now the risks are increasing and they are taking notice. They won't turn their policy portfolio over on a dime, they'll have figured out the optimal path to changing their policies to maximize their value. That's what they do for a living.
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Insurance is only for safe bets (Score:3)
Townsville has a cyclone affect the city every 5 to 10 years. That's not even going over, just within 100km. Most of the houses are built to cyclone standards and have been for 30+ years. Damage is minimal, a handful of older houses and a bit of localized inundation - the river catchment is too small for flooding.
Brisbane, the state capital city, on the other hand has major flood and hail every 2 to 3 years.
Guess where the "uninsurable" areas are? Certainly not where all the head offices and political and business leaders are located.
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Market forces at work (Score:2)
If it's too expensive to get your house destroyed every few years, then probably best not to build houses there. And if my logic is correct in most places you can't get a loan without insurance. I suppose the ultra wealthy could build a house in flood prone areas and take on the risk themselves.
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The less foolish ones will be looki
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I can setup a trailer anywhere in the state. And unimproved property has a much lower tax.
We're going to be worse off if everyone finds loop holes to make living work just for themselves. Rather than systematically addressing our broader problems.
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Yeah... did you see what happened when we tried to evacuate New Orleans and Houston during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita? We would need serious refactoring of roadways to facilitate mass evacuation. Right now, it's not much of an option for most people. We can't get cars out... it'll be worse if we put a lot of mobile homes on the road.
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Which is another way of spelling "invest a lot of money and effort in infrastructure that is only used very occasionally.
$CITY$ has a bridge over the river, which is fine except for 2 hours a day around rush hours. So is the solution
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The problem with mobile homes is they aren't very mobile. You can move them two or three times before they start to fall apart. Resale value of a used one is terrible and there is no practical financing available (sub-10% APR) for a used one, only new ones.
I think it's very sad that climate change will force humans to return to a nomadic lifestyle. Life is going to be much more difficult going that route.
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If you look at the wheels, and think "they look like the wheels from a child's bike, a forklift truck, or a wheel-barrow", then you've got the right idea about their maximum driving speed. When I see them being moved around the country (normally emblazoned with the logos of building companies, who use them as site offices, etc), they're on the back of a flat-bed lorry (or trailer - they're light enough to double up two trailers on one tractor unit of
So they've actually started listening... (Score:3, Interesting)
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No, the problem is, Australia sells a lot of coal, a lot. So they wanted the American FUD so they could continue selling coal and "create jobs" and receive mining royalties. Now, the price of coal has fallen so collieries are shutting-down. Now, they need a new way of creating jobs, meaning, jumping on the "green planet" bandwagon but of course, the far-right, which has far less power than it thinks it has, don't want to change.
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That said, coordinating stories makes the process more cost-effective for everyone.
1 in 25 (Score:2)
The article and study doesn't say anywhere what the current risk is. How many houses are already uninsurable? How big of a change is this? Also, how much of the change can be attributed to developers building close to rivers and in flood zones?
This sort of headline without proper analysis is something I expect from Fox News, not Slashdot.
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Here's a recent article about Australian floods and a flood proof house:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/20... [abc.net.au]
And here's an article about insurance costs in the same town:
https://www.theguardian.com/bu... [theguardian.com]
And here's yet another one with insurance costs of $1,000/month or more.
https://www.theguardian.com/au... [theguardian.com]
All of these articles mention frequency of floods, and that the historical frequency is obsolete as floods are increasing in number and volume.
And here's an article with actual figures of likely amounts of un
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That's a lot of nice research, but it still didn't answer the question.
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Well, thanks, but I'm not a researcher and needed to go shopping so... :)
Live elsewhere or build creatively! (Score:3, Informative)
Living in a flood zone is an amazingly bad idea which can only be mitigated by (for example) building new or moving house on an elevated "turtleback" well above any possible water level. That may be as easy as trucking in fill then grading it.
Cyclone effects can be mitigated or eliminated by building proper shelter instead of customary delicate stickbuilt junk only desired because it looks like other homes and for cost reasons (before wood prices skyrocketed). I understand the desire for conventional housing but consider it silly because it fails to be utilitarian. Creative styling can solve esthetic issues for those who care.
For example a flood, fire and cyclone-proof (not merely resistant, why build half-arsed?) home of classic Mexican design (square or rectangular with a comfy central courtyard) can be built of reinforced concrete with a precast slab roof the owner can enjoy as a deck. (If my old stickbuilt trash ever burns I'll cash the insurance check and gleefully get to work.)
Humans are good at engineering but home customers like car buyers tend to make silly choices so we get McMansions (shite quality, max square footage, bad mimicry of classic designs uninformed by understanding) instead of quality at perhaps the penalty of smaller size (though if you design to facilitate future additions you can expand at leisure).
Wildfire hazards in particular are easy to mitigate even for existing homes by building berms and removing all nearby vegetation close enough to pose a threat. (Densely packed rich-person communities built of kindling suffer badly in fires, but their demographic doesn't need to use flammable materials in the first place.)
Insurance requirements provide useful coercion to silly humans otherwise immune to better decision making.
This and similar homes are what people living in fire hazard areas would choose if they're wise, and where flood is a hazard they can go on a turtleback. The concrete shell can be pressure-washed inside and out if wanted.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/mans... [go.com]
Also note the steel building (I have one similar) which are wonderfully low maintenance, quick to erect with a small crew (self and wife did our 20x20 but larger would pose no problem) and easy to customize and insulate.
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Wildfire hazards in particular are easy to mitigate even for existing homes by building berms and removing all nearby vegetation close enough to pose a threat.
Sophistry. Have you ever been personally affected by wildfire? Berms: is this ordnance storage? The threat comes at least as much from above as from any side. I am 3.5 miles from one major recent fire line, and had index card sized pieces of charred roofing material ride the fierce wind from fire front to my driveway. The 1978 Malibu fire had what looked like 200 foot high flame fronts moving at wind speed. A friend's beach house (not wealthy: timing) had nothing left but a decorative tile mosaic. I
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So? You've maintained your house so that the vegetation is not up against the structure of the house. The roofing is non-flammable (ceramic tile, photovoltaic panels, slate, copper sheet if you like the verdigris texture), because you live in a fire zone.
Oh, you haven't actually done your basic building maintenance? Well then, it doesn't matter if
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... Which is a moveable feast. What was considered an incredible (literally : "not believable") event 30 years ago may be entirely credible today. I'm quite worried about the flood defences in my area, designed in response to a "100 year flood", 30 years ago. Now that has been upgraded to about a 25 year flood, and more of a concern for me.
Fortunately, I'm upstream from the sewage plant. Unless the tide comes in.
This is a good thing -- overall (Score:1)
Clearly this is going to be awful for people with uninsurable houses. Many such houses will either have been built a long time ago or will be owned by less well off people who cannot afford more desirable sites.
But.
This is also the kind of thing that leads to ballot-box pressure on governments to start really dealing with problems. In Australia the right wing of politics is essentially anti-science (though they would not say so), largely because none of them seem to have the intelligence to understand that
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They used gravy *browning*, which is a colourant and incredibly staining - they did not use gravy, thats just disgusting.
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Thanks for sorting that out, I should not base my research on CBBC TV shows (Horrible Histories in this case)..!
Flood plains (Score:2)
A large proportion of these problems would go away if local councils did not keep encouraging new residential developments in flood plains. Where I used to live there's a big new development in the center of the peninsula in an area called Armstrong Creek. The second part of that name might give someone a clue.
Where I currently live the first 6m above the nominal height of the creek is reserved land, that is, no building allowed. In fact you can't even buy that land. I lease it for grazing, $2 per year per
This is why Obama bought 2 ocean front mansions (Score:2)
This is why the elites fly everywhere in private jets.
I'll believe it's a crisis when the elites telling me it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis.
There's no such thing as uninsurable (Score:2)
Did you know Japan has earthquake insurance? It costs me around $130 a year to insure a house. How is this possible?
The answer is government regulation, backed by a public reinsurance scheme large enough to handle foreseeable events (up to about 12 trillion yen total payout).
All mortgages require earthquake insurance and is tax deductable. Therefore, most homes are insured. This is how insurance is supposed to work: spreading the risk.
Conversely, in Australia, when you insure a house, even in an area safe f
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You seem to misunderstand the concept of "private company" versus "public service". It is the job of private companies to maximise profits, and the different job of public services to consider what is best for society.
Now, you may think those two sets of obligations should overlap more, but that's a political question of changing the regulations, not of living in the existing regulations.
dodgy data G.I.G.O. (Score:2)
looked up our town.
We just copped surface water flooding, for the first time came into the garage, but the house was safe.
Riverine flooding is higher risk, but we don't have a local creek or river.
Coastal could have some impact, we were lucky, the high water coincided with low tide.
We are surrounded by sugar cane, so minimal bushfire risk.
Very high rainfall causes our surface flooding, but the level immediately drops when the rain stops.
No mention of rising sea level, we are 0.8 metres above high tide now.
I
May Be .. Suggests (Score:1)
I told my grandparents they should sell their house on a tidal lake in the mid-90's when it had some residual value.
According to the NOAA model the lake would be up to their doorstep by 2014.
Boy was I stupid. No change 25 years later.